BENGALURU: The Tamil Nadu government is in a dilemma over construction of 8.30 lakh houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) for urban areas as it does not have enough funds or lands to build homes for the homeless.
After carrying out a demand assessment of 8.30 lakh houseless households in urban areas of the State under the PMAY’s four components — insitu rehabilitation, credit-inked subsidy scheme, beneficiary lead construction and affordable housing in partnership, the challenge before the State government is availability of land and funds for construction of houses.
As on date, the State had obtained sanction for 3.29 lakh houses from the Centre under the PMAY under the Credit-Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLCC), Affordable Housing in Partnership Scheme and Beneficiary-led Construction Scheme, but the challenge is funds for construction.
Sources said the Centre provided a subsidy of only Rs 1.5 lakh per house under the affordable housing in partnership, while the cost of construction of multi-storied units in Chennai ranges from Rs 9 lakh to Rs 10 lakh and Rs 8 lakh to Rs 9 lakh in other parts of the State.
As per the demand survey of houseless assessed under the Affordable Housing in Partnership, there is a need to construct 2.66 lakh homes and this will entail an expenditure of Rs 24,000 crore, of which the Union government subsidy will be Rs 4,000 crore. The remaining sum has to be mobilised by the State government, sources said.
Similarly, there is a requirement of 1,630 acres to build the houses under Affordable Housing in Partnership in Chennai alone as a majority of houseless people living in slums are from the city.
Since government lands to construct houses within Chennai is negligible, it is learnt that the State government is identifying surplus lands with various government departments so that it can be transferred to the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board concerned to construct houses for the houseless who do not own land.
